


defend pop punk

by pineovercoat



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: (I mean in the endgame not really like. this is me here., (really tho nothing of value happens here this is an AU for me and only me I swear), Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Pining, Pop Punk AU, Possibly Unrequited Love, Slice of Life, That 'In Love With Your Best Friend' Angst, Unresolved Romantic Tension, but it's a meditation on that particular sadness so fair warning), like. solidly mid-2000s period piece here, self indulgent stress relief, spare emo? spare emo sir?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 13:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineovercoat/pseuds/pineovercoat
Summary: from under thecorkpaopu tree





	defend pop punk

**Author's Note:**

> alt summary: in keeping secrets of silent riku 3  
> alt summary to the alt summary: [[x]](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/552/992/14f.gif)
> 
> brief alcohol mention but probs not enough to tag? see if I could I'd make ouch-y gifsets of riku to fall out boy lyrics like “I keep my jealousy close cause it’s all mine” but I can't so I just use 2k to do pretty much the same thing but with an 'modern' AU riku analogous to kh1 riku... it's whatever. also this is the most thorough self drag I've written yet. [flips my emo bangs from 2006]
> 
> anyway, Q: Why did Riku cross the road?

“I mean, a _beach tag_ , can you believe it?” Sora asks for possibly the fifth time that night, hands gesturing wildly as he speaks. Riku’s own are shoved deep in his pockets, fisted tight as he forces out a laugh. Said beach tag, as old as Sora’s last visit, still hangs proudly from his necklace, nestled right next to the solid weight of his silver crown pendant. How he didn’t lose a thin slip of plastic in the crush of people when he somehow managed to lose his entire right shoe, Riku will never understand. 

He’s still on it as they spill out of the venue and onto the sidewalk, breath misting in clouds in front of their faces- “ _Like,_ _I still can’t- you think we coulda snuck on?” “Five whole dollars?” “Who ever heard of paying for the beach?”_

Who ever heard of snow on the beach either, Riku wonders idly, his teeth this close to chattering as they pile into Max Excalibur the Maxima, née Highwind, but he realizes the thought is ridiculous the second he thinks it. There’s plenty of coastlines in the world. Not all of them sit on the same meridian as home.

“You now, I guess,” he says, buckling himself in and sending up a cursory prayer as the engine actually manages to turn over. The dash lights up, reading 11:12 PM in the dark. _Huh_. Riku wraps his fingers around the steering wheel, gripping it with all the tender strength of the sentimental regret seizing him. _Missed my wish._ His fingers ache, but even so he doesn’t dare risk his usual (lazy right-hand-on-the-console, left-hand-driving) with a passenger. With this passenger. 

It’s quiet in the car as the windows defrost and the heat kicks in. The snow falls faint and the overhead lights flicker low. A pretty picture, halfway to desolate in the way it can only be after a show- there’s groups of kids trickling out of the Lanes, billows of feathery smoke rising from their cigarettes and their breath alike, lending life to a ghost town. 

Riku catalogues their losses. His hair tie; his temper, briefly, when someone had tried (and failed) to split Sora’s lip; twenty bucks; his time to Sora’s taste in music, but given it was spent with him, it can’t really be counted as a casualty. Sora made out like a bandit- dignity and face intact, even if his shoe was lost to the ages (or more likely the circle pit). He would’ve gotten phone numbers, too, what with all the girls making sympathetic faces at him over it, if he could ever seem to pay attention to that kind of thing- _why_ didn’t he ever seem to pay attention to that kind of thing-

“Hey man, you okay?”

It hits him suddenly that not twenty minutes ago they were both in a cramped room alive with sound. Now, the ringing in his ears is almost as loud as the silence. Suddenly the prospect of a long drive home seems downright Herculean.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, like he’s been thinking over it awhile. Muddying the waters is practically second nature now. He chafes his hands together, casual. “I’m just thinking… you wanna bet that’s why all the good bands are from Jersey?”

Sora hoots. “Yeah, sure. They were all broke, so they started punk bands about it.”

The laugh’s enough. The ice cracks off the night, his nerves settle, the world’s set to rights. Funny how that is. The rest could be silence, and he wouldn’t care at all. (It’s not, because Sora has made a habit of keeping up a steady stream of conversation for the two of them, and he most definitely _would_ care, but. ‘But’. He wishes he could make up his mind about what’s on the other end of that thought.)

He pauses long enough to soak in the glow of it before backing out of the lot square in the center of the town. They’ve got the town, the ocean, and the whole day in the rearview by the time the dash shows midnight, backlit in neon. By this time tomorrow Sora will be on a plane home, which is bizarre, because it feels impossible that anything could exist outside of this moment. Like he’s always been here in this car with Sora riding shotgun, and always will be. Like he could drive off into forever, finally run away like he always planned to, not just to _college_ , but wherever, anywhere at all, leave it all behind, and Sora-

Well. Sora’s already asleep before the first toll booth.

Snow swirls steadily in the path his lights cut, but it doesn’t commit to the ground. The turnpike slips by under his wheels to the sound of the same CD looping over itself. The same old thing, over and over again. _But maybe there’s something else they could do inside of this silence; but maybe one day sooner rather than later Sora will get tired of talking for two; but maybe he should give up the ghost, lose Sora’s number and get lost, too, do stupid shit and then grow up like everyone else does. Leave home and everyone who knows his name behind for good, and stop torturing himself-_

Nothing ever changes. The harsh notes keep him company down the long stretches of empty highway. He’s used to it by now, knows it by heart. The feeling’s been with him so long, it’s more home than any place he’s ever lived. Can’t outrun that, but he’s survived it so far. The miles and years are manageable, so long as he keeps a steady grip.

Sora stirs at the rest stop, blinking blearily at the attendant standing by the gas pump.

“I always forget they do that here,” he murmurs, scrubbing under his eyes with the heel of his palms. His hair sticks up wildly, every which way, stiff with sleep and dried sweat. Riku’s fingers twitch. Despairing, he digs in his pockets for cash.

“Just for you,” he says, finding a twenty which he passes immediately through the window, half a thought on nagging Sora for some of the ones he knows he’s got left in his pockets. Are you supposed to tip in Jersey? “He knows you don’t know how.”

Sora snorts and flops over to cradle his head against the window. It steams up under the gentle puff of his breath. “Know how to pump gas,” he mutters petulantly, somewhere into the hollow of his own shoulder. 

Riku rips his gaze away, throws something back in the midst of merging onto the road, though he doesn’t remember exactly what. It’s arguing just to argue at this point, like sparring as much as anything else. Muscle memory. They know each other, Riku thinks, and allows himself a smile. Like chord progressions. Like calluses. 

Like childhood friends, after all.

“Hey, lazybones,” he drawls. “Cut it out. You’re supposed to be keeping me awake.”

“You won’t fall asleep.” Sora yawns, and something he probably thinks is sly and charming curls through his voice. “You’ve got precious cargo.”

“Uh huh.” He considers jerking the wheel for the hell of it. “Just for that, I’m gonna drive us into a tree.”

“Sweet! I always wanted to die in the Pine Barrens.” He sits up straight, throws his feet up on the dash, and much more subdued- genuine, even- says: “Alright, roll the window down. Gonna need the air if I’m staying up with you the rest of the way.” 

Riku swallows. The same old thing, he marvels. Over and over again. 

“You don’t actually have to-”

“Riku,” Sora chides. He’s smiling. Riku can hear it. “I want to! Can’t sleep through _all_ the hours I’ve got with you.” 

He starts singing then, like it's nothing, and Riku stews, tapping out an accompaniment on the wheel as he considers all the evidence in his corner versus Sora just being the way he is. Nothing conclusive, it never is, but still. It’s unfair how hard he makes it to be a skeptic.

Speech falls away after that, and eventually, the sound of Sora singing along to the radio does too. So much for not sleeping through it all- but he can’t blame him. There’s a reason he’s the one who drives.

Some twenty silent miles down the road, Riku finally relaxes, letting his right hand drop to the center console. Only, there’s a faint brush, and Riku realizes his pinky is just a hair’s breadth away from Sora’s. Glancing down, he considers how best to snatch it back without drawing attention to himself, but then Sora stirs, fingertips brushing over his knuckles as he gropes for a water bottle in the dark. He pats Riku’s wrist carefully on the retreat, murmuring an apology, and Riku’s heart effects a ridiculous flutter that rapidly becomes a bid for his throat, borne up by the bootless thought he just can’t shake: Sora’s hands are just as warm as the rest of him.

Steady, he tells himself. Steady.

“Hey, Riku,” Sora rasps, then drains the bottle. His voice sounds less scratchy on the other end of it, more playful and sweet. “Play me that one I like?”

Riku’s heart does something funny in his chest again. _What’s the point of you_ , he rails at hummingbird beat of it, chin jutting out angrily towards his chest. _All you do is mess me up--_

He composes himself, covers with a thoughtful nod, and positions his hands at a perfect, unimpeachable two and ten on the steering wheel. “That one you like. Right.”

“ _Riku_.”

“You gotta give me a bit more than that, Sora.”

Sora makes a grouchy noise. “Prom night!” He waves his hand vaguely, like he can pull the words he wants from the air. Riku catches the flash of it in his periphery- the knobby bones of his wrist, the dark cut of the neat black Xs on the back of his hand. In a few years, he won’t need them. In a few years, he might not need this at all, and then what?

_Well I guess this is growing up_ , he thinks with a snort.

“Prom night,” he repeats instead, acting the fool. He knows exactly the one, knows the harmonies Sora attempts to put to it by heart, sings them too when he’s alone in the car and finds there’s something missing in the sound. 

“With the piano,” Sora elaborates. “And the violin.” He mimes playing for a second, then sits bolt upright, snapping his fingers vigorously. “ _Existentialism on Prom Night!_ \- god, _remember_ prom night?”

Of all the gin joints. Riku barely squashes the rush of unease. “Unfortunately.” Maybe he would’ve had a better time of it if he spent it worrying about Dostoyevsky and Sartre and not if there was any particular meaning to the yellow flowers in Kairi’s corsage that might tip the scale so hard out of his favor he could finally get around to the sorry business of getting over himself. 

Sora laughs. “It wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“You’re not the one who had to clean the puke from their car.”

“I mean, you’re the one who puked,” Sora says, mild. “I think it’s fair.”

A shot for every springy little flower- loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me not, loves me--- 

He was scrawnier back then. Seven and his frayed nerves had been more than enough. So really, it was less fair and more on the side of deserved. 

“You know where the CDs are,” he demurs. “You’re looking for Straylight Run.”

“ _Existentialism on Prom Night_ ,” Sora mutters to himself. Riku hears the sound of pages in the CD binder being turned- _thwip, thwip, thwip_. “What ever happened to one word titles?”

The CD starts, and Riku’s grateful that he doesn’t have to come up with an answer, because there isn’t a single thing on the tip of his tongue that he thinks he could get away with saying out loud.

The lights of the turnpike slat through his car and pour over the both of them in long sweeps as the music swells. Riku can’t exactly watch with his eyes on the road, but he knows what he’d see anyway- both thumbs, tapping out the rhythm against his knee. Hardly a drummer, but all kinetic energy anyway, from the crown of his mussed head all the way down to his bouncing toes. _With his eyes closed, too,_ Riku decides- he always closes his eyes when he’s singing to a song he likes- but maybe the faintest hint of blue would peak out as he opened them again and smiled over at him just so-

He grips the wheel so tight that his knuckles go completely bloodless, white as the bone underneath. _Coward_ , the pulse in his fingertips accuses. _Coward, coward, coward_. It’s insistent, his heart, but what’s the sense of listening to something so flighty, so immune to reality, willing to risk itself on chance and ridiculous things like hope? He keeps his hands exactly where they belong, and his thoughts on yellow flowers.

“ _And we’re keepin’ it, keep it all going, this delicate balance, vulnerable, all-knowing_ -” He can practically hear Sora’s nose wrinkling as he stops mid-phrase. “What does that even mean, Riku?

“Sora.” Riku laughs, and he doesn’t even have to force it this time. “I’ve got no fucking clue.”

**Author's Note:**

> A: To get out of this town.
> 
> (and then a few months later they have a falling out because even in a mundane au riku’s gotta go some measure of darkside but he Gets Better and they make up years later after much sad but don’t actually get together until their late 20s and sora is just Actively In Pining Pursuit and theme for the sequel I won’t ever write is obviously: [;D](https://youtu.be/1j4Pf228vhE) ) 
> 
> obvs I referenced a lot of things here and own none of them, but you can reminisce on straylight run with me [[here]](https://youtu.be/293h41Bd-Do) and if you deservedly berate me on any of the other references i'll capslock yell the lyrics w/ you in the comments, square deal?


End file.
